Are the Navy pilots actual eye witnesses to seeing these crafts or are they eye witnesses to whatever is electronically displayed to their HUDS/Helmets/lenses?
It seems every video I've come across, it was all electronic so it has me thinking just a software error.
Every video I've seen, too, has been from some sort of electronic sensor. The US Navy was working on Project NEMESIS at least as far back as 2019, which sought to (and likely did) develop the means to spoof electronic signatures.
They’ve had “drones” (more like gliders) since the gulf war that can fake electronic signatures of different planes. They worked well and were targeted by Iraqi defenses.
I know in my city visitors find it weird when local strangers just start including them in conversations. I know I’d frequent places a line and be fine striking up conversations with whoever was also there.
But me visiting other cities and trying the same, I’d be met with wired looks and asked why I’m talking to them.
NYTimes is reporting that this is actually the fifth balloon to cross into our airspace. First four were seemingly ignored, three times under the Trump administration and once before during Biden’s.
The implication of that being the shootdown was a media-initiated event. After civilians saw the balloon from the ground, and it became lead story on every news site, with the MAGA press calling Biden "weak", something had to be done, whether it makes military sense or not.
I mean it's game theory. Once you start allowing such things you simply have to always allow them. If you allow China to bully you into not visiting Taiwan, they will start bullying you into something else. Neither side will actually do war so it makes sense not to fold
Ah yes, but like others have pointed out, China did in fact allow US ballons over their territory.
(googles loon project)
"Neither side will actually do war so it makes sense not to fold"
And neither side wants war with each other, but if either side is pushed more and more into it from internal and external pressure, than I sadly would not rule out that possibility.
Tesla was found to be deactivating the autopilot mode at the second before a crash [0]. I think it's for a dubious reason so that Tesla could declare none of their cars were in autopilot/FSD mode when involved in a crash.
"The agency’s analysis of these sixteen subject first responder and road maintenance vehicle crashes indicated that Forward Collision Warnings (FCW) activated in the majority of incidents immediately prior to impact and that subsequent Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) intervened in approximately half of the collisions. On average in these crashes, Autopilot aborted vehicle control less than one second prior to the first impact."
It's for PR, so that they can publicly release statistics showing good results on paper. An average consumer will learn the good-looking statistics and spread the word about Tesla safety, as it already happens, without taking the above report into account, since it's buried underneath tens of comments and I imagine Tesla will also fight it in some ways. Then, the average consumer will believe that FSD is indeed safer than a human driver, and buy the system. If crash happens, Tesla doesn't provide legal liability. I imagine most cases will be closed and, overall, Tesla will be at a profit, so why not do it?
at best the only value I'd see is the ability to have newspaper write "tesla SDV wasn't on when crash happened".. actually a good amount of PR leverage I admit
So I'm an American who uses TikTok for entertainment.
I don't think it's utterly ridiculous to allow TikTok to continue. Even hearing these threats that China is possibly surveilling me - what do they get that other social media apps like Instagram get from me? From the FBI it sounds like the national security threat is that China may use it alter my feed to influence me or take over the control of my Apple phone? Has Apple warned users that TikTok will take control of their phone?
As far as I'm concerned, I'm just watching short 60 second videos and could not care less if China has my birthdate.
Reposting from another comment [0], but there are at least three reasons you should be concerned what happens with your TikTok data:
1. Shaping and manipulating minds. Eg, show healthy, educational, intellectual content to Chinese users, and unhealthy, addictive, emotional, short-attention-span-inducing content in US and foreign markets (already happening [1]).
2. Train AI that can be used for analyzing and further manipulating foreign publics, or for providing strategic insight into political and election dynamics, making political and election interference operations more effective.
3. Collate data on individuals gained from TikTok with other sources like credit ratings agency breaches, OPM, etc. for their entire life, to create a continually growing lifetime data profile on every American, European, Asian, South American, African, etc. which may be used for pressure, coercion, or manipulation operations or similar. Think of it as "customer lifetime value" [2] for political purposes.
None of which we want an adversarial, totalitarian foreign power to be doing to us.
The reason for #1 is that China has regulations on what content can be shown to children. The US could pass similar regulations, but chooses not to. This isn't TikTok's or China's fault.
You are oversimplifying the issue. It's not about having your birthdate, it's about capturing data about your tastes and preferences over time to feed into a profiling model.
It's a way to capture data to use inference models to understand who you actually are, your tastes and personality.
Yes, Instagram/FB/Meta do the same, Google does the same, the difference is that Meta and Google are not the government or, worse, an adversarial government from your nation that could weaponise such data. Tailor-made suggestions and recommendations already work pretty well for adtech, tailored suggestions of content with aims to slowly shift cultures and perceptions is much more dangerous than serving compulsive consumption.
And yes, very likely the US government has some access to FB/Instagram/Meta/Google profiling data, I also believe that's dangerous (even more that I'm not an American citizen, nor live in the USA and still am probably surveilled by its government) but in a different degree and level than what TitTok and China might be able to.
The article mentioned the company sharing birthdates which is why I used it myself.
I'm just failing to understand why China using whatever data TikTok has on me to understand my tastes and personality is a national security issue for the United States.
The fear seems to be that China could tweak a US citizen's feed, based on their profiling, to inject Chinese propaganda?
> The fear seems to be that China could tweak a US citizen's feed, based on their profiling, to inject Chinese propaganda?
Yes, that's the assumption. And just to be clear, not feed you direct Chinese propaganda but drip-feed behaviour-changing content to make you more or less sensitive to some topics, and not necessarily you but maybe a different cohort they identify as being more easily manipulated. For example: teenagers or young adults (which are the majority of users on TikTok) that are still not mature enough to have developed critical thinking about what they are being fed.
It's exactly to avoid this kind of possible operation that the bells are ringing. Not necessarily because they are already exploiting it but because it's definitely a massive risk to allow such data to be vacuumed by an adversarial government.
I use Home Depot's Wiz lightbulbs for this around my home. $10 a full-color bulb or so and each one individually connects to the home's wifi so there's no need for a hub or anything. The app works fine on my iPhone.
Stopping issuance of new Treasury debt, and getting the Fed to just monetize IOUs wouldn’t invalidate existing debt notes (unless the Treasury just “paid them out” with the newly created money.)
No, it would simply destroy the existing “value” of the currency, just as in all cases of debasement in history.
The empire declares a jubilee. The financial world requires the good graces of the empire, and the empire continues to make the case that its continued dominance is necessary for world peace (which is arguably true). The calculus then for world finance cartel is to determine whether future profits under new global management post-empire will exceed future profits with empire minus a major write off of debt.
As to US's credibility, let us recall that credit worthiness is set in the West, and, should the empire continue to exist, those who object to US's AAAsuper+ rating by the financial world can go and trade with North Korea and stop buying US bonds.
The energy trap of Petrodollar is now effectively busted (see progressively more negative press on KSA in US over the years culminating in the recent spat), so empire will need something else to create demand for US dollars for payment. Possibly chips? Food?
Which is why there is a slow simmering world war brewing. Everyone knows where this is going. Something has to give. Either the empire and global order du jour, or, the restructuring demands of emerging powers in the developed world + a sore ex empire.
p.s. btw Polyani's The Great Transformation discusses the role of the financial system and world order and the ambiguous but symbiotic relationship between powers and banking, and world order, right at the introduction.
For every debt there is a matching asset by accounting identity. When the asset is spent it creates a flow of taxation that precisely matches the debt for any positive tax rate.
That's a simple geometric series a 15 year old can do. Get a piece of paper and work it out and you'll see.
This but unironically. The 355 ship navy and 386 squadron air force won't build themselves. All those HIMARS, NASAMS, Stingers, Javelins, and counter battery radars we sent to Ukraine also need to be replenished.
The vast majority of our defense spending is Salaries for US Service Men and Women. And they are under paid in many cases. Just bumping the salary of the bottom ranks would likely shift the spending ratio.
I looked closer, and it seems my memory is either bad or the levels have changed since I last dug into those numbers. In either case, thanks for checking those numbers!
Brought back a fond memory. Growing up my family's computer was a Mac with system 6 and Jurassic Park was released. I'd make some park control user interfaces in the paint program - trying to replicate the Mac menu and button designs - then play some Jurassic Park trying to save the park.
Built in 1905 of reinforced concrete.
Worth a visit.